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Hello you guys, welcome back to the podcast. I hope you’re having a great week and I’m excited for today’s episode because I do a lot of these where it’s simple, basic strategy that will move the needle massively in your business. That’s one of my values is let’s do what’s going to move the needle the most and keep it simple because those are the ways and the paths to success. This has been on my mind a lot with a lot of things that have changed in the last year, the marketing industry, many people’s audiences, their needs, just the whole world has gone through a lot in the last year. The industry has changed. The economy has changed. It’s really interesting to witness. I think a lot of people are struggling to keep up with the changes in their business and make sure their offer and strategy stays relevant.

This has been on my mind because there is a solution to that that almost always will work. One thing that I want to talk about is one of the reasons that I got into marketing that as soon as I was into it, I just absolutely loved it. I think also, one of the things that separates me from other marketers or businesses out there, agencies out there, people supporting with ads is that at the core of everything I believe and know and keep in mind always that behind your marketing strategy is just a person going through it, and if you can maintain that connection with that person and create that experience for them, connect with them emotionally, with your words, with your actions, with the value you bring, you will be successful. If you’re able to give people what they want and need and get them the results they desire with both your marketing and then in your delivery, you will be successful.

That is how you build a successful business. So right now with people who are struggling with various things, offers not converting businesses not doing as well, Facebook ad costs going up, or really all ad costs across the board going up, cost to acquire going up, you can always come back to this one thing, and that is the connection to your audience. If you are having an issue converting or getting someone to take an action in your business, you need to go back to the understanding of that person. I recommend talking to them. 

This has been on my mind a lot because we’re actually about to do this, we might already be doing it when this episode comes out, and I did it about a year and a half ago, and I talked about it on the podcast, but as actually getting on the phone and interviewing your audience and asking them what is your biggest struggle? What is your desire? What’s your biggest frustration? What’s your dream come true with your marketing, or whatever your niche is? What’s going on? Don’t ask them things like what do you want? Ask them what they are struggling with, what they’ve already tried and what their desire is. If you can do that to 25, a hundred people even, you will have so much intel that will support your marketing, your messaging, the positioning of your offer, you will be back to success. 

But here’s why I talked about a few episodes ago the levers that you can pull in your marketing. It went deeper on messaging, so I’m not going to dive into that in this episode, you can go back a couple episodes to get to that one, but what I want to do is make you guys think and question, are you really connected to your ideal customer right now? I think as we grow our business, as time goes on, one of two things happens. 

One, we either stay stuck in the initial connection we had with our ideal customer that maybe was… I started my business six years ago and really started my agency about four years ago. So I either would stay in that original mindset of where people were four years ago and keep operating my content, my delivery, all the components of my marketing based off of that. Or people as they grow their company, they become disconnected because their team is handling things. So they become disconnected from the feedback that your audience, your students, your customers are giving and then a disconnect forms. When a disconnect forms, by the time you realize it, it’s already too late. It’s probably already been there for four to six months, and now you have to work really hard to get it back.

I’m seeing this happen in a lot of businesses right now. If you are one of those people who is struggling to sell your offer, who’s struggling to connect with your audience, who’s struggling to stand out in today’s market, I want you to remember that this is always going to be the bottom line truth of marketing. You are marketing to humans and the way you market to humans is you get an emotional connection with them, you understand them on an emotional level, and you speak to their needs, their desires, their frustrations, their dreams, better than any other company out there. You can only do that if you have the best understanding of what those things are. So I think it’s a great practice to work into your marketing, to work into your business, that every year, every single year, you get on the phone with your customers and with your audience.

So we’re about to do this. We’re going to try and do 50 to 70 interviews with both our customers and our audience who haven’t become customers, because so much changes, right? Things move so fast today. A year ago where my customers were, where my audience was, is completely different than it is today. I can sit here all day long and guess what they’re going through and try and look in our Facebook group and pay attention to what you guys are saying publicly on our posts, or in my DMS. Yes, that is a good thing to do, and you should do that, but also I’m going to get a lot more out of one-on-one talking to people, having conversations, going deeper, and then taking that into my marketing. I truly believe if there’s one thing that you could do as a company to improve your messaging, it is this.

The reason I believe it is I’ve done it. I’ve also watched dozens of clients and students do it to really support their marketing and to improve their results. When you first hear about this, you might be like, “I don’t have time for this and that sounds terrible because I hate doing interviews and talking to people,” and I get it. But it’s worth it. If you care about your business growth and you care about your marketing success, you’ll do this. I’m encouraging you to build in a process where this happens consistently in two ways.

One, that you do these interviews about every year, because I just think things change so fast and you need to make sure you haven’t become disconnected in your offer in the way you position it or in your marketing in general, in your content. Two, take opportunities to consistently listen to your audience. So for example, if you do a webinar or you have an opportunity where you’ve got people watching you on a video, ask them like, “hey guys what are you struggling with right now? What’s going really well for you right now?” Get a gauge, get a pulse on where they’re at. What is going on in their head? What are they thinking? Take opportunities to get that feedback, because it will help tremendously with your content and with your positioning. 

The other piece of this is at least I have witnessed the need to actually shift our offer over the last year. The offer that I had four years ago, there’s no way it would have been supportive enough for our clients and our students, because so much has changed in the industry. Now I’m in a really fast paced industry, but I think this is almost true in most cases. I can think of this being true, whether it’s a physical product, service, digital product. Make sure that you are not unwilling to adapt your offer. You can see big companies who did this. Look at Microsoft. They are a huge company that was stuck in one way of doing things how they were going to do it. They weren’t going to adapt and listen to what the audience wanted, and Apple came along and did that and was very successful. That’s obviously an extreme example, but it happens all the time. 

I want to mention that it’s really easy to get stuck in this place, because here’s the problem. We are CEOs. A lot of us are solopreneurs running our company from the ground up. We didn’t have investing. We don’t have that traditional corporate experience. So we’re busy and it’s easy for literally a year to go by and us to have not looked at your sales page for the messaging, not looked at your website, not looked at the emails that you’re sending out in your automated sequence, not look at your ads, not look at your strategy, not look at your offer. These are all things that need to be evaluated every three to six months. 

Then you should be talking to your audience consistently, but doing those interviews almost every year so you don’t become disconnected. Like I said at the beginning, if a disconnect happens, if you become irrelevant and other companies have come along and solve the problem better, or met your audience where they’re at now better than you have, it is hard to catch up. It’s hard to turn that around and it takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen in a month. 

You want to stay ahead of that, and the only way you can stay ahead of that is by listening to your audience and remembering that talking, listening to, understanding your ideal customer will always be the key to successful marketing, because that plays into everything that plays into your messaging, your offer, the positioning of your offer, your strategy, your content, the way you attract your audience, convert your audience, sell to your audience, all of that stems from do you understand them? And do you understand them today, because what they needed a year ago, at least in how it’s positioned and understood, has probably changed. So if you haven’t adjusted the things that impact the way they perceive your connection to them, you’re probably falling behind. 

If you’re struggling with your marketing or you’re feeling like that, you’re feeling like, “I just can’t stand out with my ads, my organic, my email list,” I’m just seeing this happen a lot of places. Go back and connect to your audience. That’s what we’re doing, because I think this is so important and I want to stay ahead of it because things are changing so fast. I think if there’s one thing you could do, set a quarterly goal or something going into the new quarter and go do a hundred interviews and come back and tell me how impactful that was. Because I can guarantee that not only will it be life-changing and eye-opening to you, it will improve everything in your business, from your marketing team, your delivery, to everything you create. It will improve it all because that understanding can’t come from you guessing. 

You can sit there all day long and try, and pay attention on social media, and make assumptions, and try and figure out how you should write it, but at the end of the day, it needs to come out of the mouths of your ideal customer. If you can do that successfully, you’ll instantly improve your results. Remember now and any time in the future that you hit one of these roadblocks, you hit a situation where things start trending down, or if something worked a year ago and it isn’t working today, or you’re feeling like you’re having trouble standing out, or engagement is going down, go back to the customer behind every marketing strategy, every ad, every funnel, every email a person reading, a person consuming it. You need to maintain that connection with that person, that individual person to be successful. I hope this was helpful for you guys, and I’ll talk to you next week.

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